Scatter of Blueprints instead of Meshes?
Hi! I'm Jaime Delmonte! We've talked before, but with another account hehe.
I wanted to ask about a thing I'd like to do using Dash but I have some questions about how to do it.
I have a long road. I want to create buildings at the sides, procedurally. I have the buildings separated. My idea was to make each building a BP and then scatter the buildings using the Path Scatter tool or even the Grid tool, but here's the thing:
I want to scatter these Blueprints instead of meshes because I want to add lights to the buildings inside the BPs. And I'd like the buildings inside my road to be changed automatically... but it's not working. When I scatter Blueprints, it's like it's scattering its interiors and not the BP itself, so if I change the OG blueprint it doesn't change in the scattered ones.
Could you help me with that, please?
Thank you so much!
29 Replies
Hey @JaimeDelmonte Happy to hear from you again! 🙂
Hmm, we do support blueprint scattering already. Did you scatter it "manually" by opening Path scatter and assign the BPs from the viewport? That should work in theory at least 😄 Could you maybe record a video? And having the UE outout log open so we can see if anything pops up?
BP support for the Dash Content Browser is coming in the next Dash version fyi🙌
Hey! Thanks for the quick answer! I'll send the video in a few minutes
But yeah, what I did was opening the Path Scatter option, then selected my curve as the Path and three BPs for the Scatter option
And it does scatter the stuff, but if I enter to any BP and I add a PointLight, it doesn't affect to the BPs that have been scattered
I can send a video, yeah
Also, there's one thing that could be awesome to be able to do it, but I can't think of how doing it
I know how to scatter the buildings, and I added their part of the sidewalk on each BP, buuuut, it would be awesome if, everytime there is a break in the scatter (I mean, everytime there are no buildings together), I'd love to add the corner of the sidewalk
But I think that might be impossible with the plugin? I'd need a specific PCG system for that?
Or do you think it's something doable?
Hello @JaimeDelmonte , although we support Blueprints, the generated scatter is an unreal HISM, which only places the mesh part of the blueprint. So lights or other elements will not be available on it. We have been looking on how to have something that can support the full blueprint, but nothing that is as performant as the HISM instancer.
That's what I thought!
There's no way then to do it with adding lights too, right? I tried with Level Instances too but it's the same
Not at the moment with Dash unfortunately
Being able to scatter stuff with lights would be really useful though
We know 🙂
Like for example, scattering objects with lights (like street-lamps) across a whole street or that kind of things
I can't make promise on if and when it will be supported though
Anyway, I love the plugin, though! It's always really helpful; I've been using it already for almost 2 years
So thank you!
Happy to hear that, thank you for being part of the amazing Dash users!
Thank you for the amazing plugin and the kind support!
Regarding your other request, it's a more complex procedural system, which I'm not sure how I would approach it with Dash at the moment. Generating the sidewalks procedurally, would introduce a whole set of new problems to deal with, but if you have already some modular parts, maybe is something it can be figured out
They are like modular, or I can make them, that would not be a problem
I mean
Buildings are blocks like this
Corners are blocks like this
And the idea is to scatter Buildings like this and, when we have breaking parts, use the "corner" asset for fitting it there
You see what I mean?
so we get like blocks like this
I ended up designing a whole BP xDDD
Damn, good job 😄😄
Looking great!
Thanks!
It took me more that I'd like to admit AHHAHAHAH
But I'm an artist, not a programmer, so... I'm proud it works ^^
Haha you should!
Hopefully you learnt something as well along the way👏😄
Absolutely 🔥
hey, sorry I'm just reading this, but with path scatter you could probably achieve that too
When in "Density Mode = Fit" you can pick the start and end block, including the direction they need to face
so if you have a curve with 2 points, for example you can create the setup like you show in the drawing
If I had the right assets, I would try to create a compound for this 😄
good exercise with PCG though 🙌